How to get to St Jean or Roncesvalles
What about Food?
What is a usual day like?
Where can I get a pilgrims passport?
Did you lose much weight on the Camino?
How much did you spend?
What is the weather like?
How safe is it? I am a woman – how safe is it?
How fit do you need to be?
I am x years old, am I too old?
What about medical help?
I only have one, two, three weeks, which part or parts are the best?
What about mobile phones, cameras, ipods, etc.
I only speak English, or …?
Can I join a group?
What about food on the Camino?
Yes, what about food? A question which had not occurred to me before going to Spain and France to start my first Camino. I have had the pleasure of traveling in Spain and France on numerous occasions before and I love their food. Compared to the usual British cuisine I find it more tasty.
All that said, the food along the Camino is was not what I had become used to in Paris or Madrid.
Mornings I just wanted coffee to start with. Most of the time I had a snack bar that I had bought the day before. Then I would walk to the first bar. It would normally be full of pilgrims getting breakfast and like me their first coffee of the day. So the walk to breakfast could be 5km but normally much less. If the albergue I had stayed in was in a large enough town there would be a bar open about 6.30 or 7.00am so breakfast would be had there.
Lunch had a little more variety, I got used to a Spanish dish which is made of egg and potatoes – Tortilla de patatas – and I would often have this in a baguette. Sometimes I bought tuna, or cold meats, fruit and some bread; then I would stop along the way during the hottest part of the day and rest and eat. However, many pilgrims push their walking quite fast so that they are finished walking for the day by this time. See What is a usual day like?
During the first two weeks I ate out every night. Every town has a bar which serves the Pilgrims menu. This consists of three courses with wine and/or water. The price varies from about €8 to €12. This was enough to fill me for the rest of the evening.
There are small shops in villages, so buying your own food to cook in the evenings in Albergue’s is also possible. I did this mostly during the last ten days or so. Pilgrim’s menus become very boring night after night – very much the same from village to village. Once I had met and traveled with others it was easy at night to all get together and pay together to cook food between us. Cheaper – but more importantly more convivial. Most Albergue’s had cooking facilities, see the Albergue list for kitchen.
